Season ends with USF sweep in second round

Katherine Arlak lost in the Knights' Big East Tournament
exit-loss to South Florida, marking her final collegiate
contest.

A 4-0 loss to South Florida in the Big East tournament closed
the curtain on the Rutgers tennis team's 2010 season. The Scarlet
Knights were bulled over on Friday in the second round of the
tourney in South Bend, Ind., as a predominately successful spring
reached a disappointing conclusion. The Knights finish the year
with a record of 14-8. But unlike last season, the team failed to
advance beyond the second day of the tournament and must settle for
a one-win postseason. That victory came on Thursday, when Rutgers
pounded Pittsburgh 4-0 in round one. Less than a month removed from
a 7-0 defeat in Piscataway, the Panthers were once again dismantled
at the hands of the Knights. However, the thrill of yet another
pummeling of Pittsburgh was short-lived. Just 24 hours after the
win, Rutgers was again involved in a shutout match — though this
time, it was on the wrong end of the equation. The talented No. 24
South Florida squad was able to stay ahead of the Knights
throughout the contest and cruised to a conference win. Rutgers
assistant coach Alex Arlak feels her team had a shot at earning a
victory before USF shifted into high gear. "We competed well
against South Florida," Arlak said. "They were definitely
vulnerable in some places and we came close to using that to our
advantage. But they are a very talented team and were able to take
it to us in the end." Friday's defeat is the latest in a series of
losses against ranked opponents. Rutgers has never beaten a
nationally ranked team and the Bulls made sure that trend
continued. "It was a disappointment to lose in the second round,"
Arlak said. "We have trouble getting over that hump and beating
teams that are highly ranked. It's something that this program
needs to work on and it's important if we want to keep moving
forward." Sophomore singles player Jen Holzberg echoed her coach's
sentiments when looking back on the match. "Part of it is
frustrating because you always want to finally beat a top ranked
team," Holzberg said. "But it also motivates us to work hard so
that we can do it next year." "I feel like we did have a very good
chance of beating South Florida. I know they were ranked very
highly but we were neck and neck with them most of the way. The
match was a lot closer than the score shows and we can take some
positives out of it." Despite the lopsided decision, Rutgers saw
some highly contentious matches against USF. Holzberg took USF's
Melissa Koning to a first-set tiebreaker before losing in the No. 2
singles slot, while junior ace Amy Zhang and senior Katherine Arlak
each fought hard through tough defeats. Arlak, a team captain who
played her final match in scarlet on Friday, said her last Big East
tournament was bittersweet. "I think we did play pretty well," she
said. "We beat Pitt the way we expected to and we were definitely
happy about that. Unfortunately, we lost to a good USF team and
that was frustrating. We would have liked to move on to the next
round but it didn't happen." The Bulls' win would be the last of
their season. USF was beaten 4-0 on Saturday by DePaul, who squared
off with tournament host No.5 Notre Dame yesterday in the
conference championship. The Irish pummeled the Blue Demons 4-0 to
win the Big East crown in front of their home crowd.

Though Rutgers was not able to duplicate its 2009 postseason
run, when it advanced to the tourney's semifinals, Holzberg said
there's no reason to sulk. "It's disappointing that we didn't make
it to the semis because we had the opportunity in front of us," she
said. "But I do think we came into the tournament playing really
strong. We beat Pittsburgh even worse than we did a month ago and
before that we ended the season with a few great Big East wins.
It's definitely something to build off."